India Says UN Is Central to Climate Change Talks

Feb. 5 (Bloomberg) -- India said the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change has to be the centerpiece of global treaty talks aimed at combating climate change.

An accord reached at Copenhagen in December is not a substitute for the UN process, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said at a conference in New Delhi today.

The UN is trying to keep talks from splintering after U.S. President Barack Obama and leaders from some of the worst polluting nations stepped in to write a last-minute agreement in December that has won formal endorsement from about 55 nations since it was concluded Dec. 19. The UN supports the Copenhagen Accord provided it helps talks among 193 nations to agree on a global climate-protection treaty, according to Yvo De Boer, executive secretary of the UNFCCC.

Singh defended the UN panel whose work was the benchmark for global climate talks after its estimate on how fast Himalayan glaciers are melting was challenged by a report in the London-based Times newspaper.

India has full confidence in the process and leadership of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Singh said.

Under the Copenhagen Accord, countries will aim to keep the global rise in temperatures since industrialization in the 1800s to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit). Industrialized nations can submit greenhouse-gas reduction targets for inclusion in an appendix and developing nations can spell out in a separate annex actions they intend to take to limit their own emissions.

The accord was crafted by countries including the U.S., China and India on the sidelines of a two-week UN climate summit in the Danish capital that was beset by walkouts and squabbles between developed and developing nations.

By Gaurav Singh

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-02-05/india-says-un-is-central-to-...